Content & Copyright

• ars technica, The death of the album (in handy graph form) (May 10): “the shift to digital singles, the death of the album, and the rise of streaming. To an industry accustomed to fattening up on album-only CD revenue for two decades, this new world has been tough to accept.”
• Chicago Reader, The Sun-Times Preserves Its Photo Archive by Selling It (May 6): As newspapers go bust, what happens to their photo archives? (Via Big Journalism.)
• Online Spin, The Battle of the Big Three (May 5): Not CBS, NBC and ABC but Google, Apple, and Facebook. “These three companies are making moves that separate them dramatically from the rest of the pack. Plus, their respective spheres of influence are no longer constrained by the parameters of the computer.”
• Blog Maverick, The Future of TV is . . . TV (May 3): Mark Cuban says “The potential for video over the internet is huge….. and always will be. The future of TV is TV. That is what consumers want. Consumers have made their choice to spend money on new HDTVs. Why ? Because  they want to watch TV.”
• EconTalk, Meyer on the Music Industry and the Internet (March 10): “Music industry veteran . . . talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the evolution of the music industry and the impact of the digital revolution.”

Patents

• The American, How to Think About Patenting Genes (May 7), by John Calfee & Elizabeth DuPré:  Calfee is one of the most persistently perceptive thinkers on IP and health issues.  (See also below, under Health.)
• Berkeley Technology & Law Center, High Technology Entrepreneurs and the Patent System: Results of the 2008 Berkeley Patent Survey (June 2009): “We offer description and analysis of the 2008 Berkeley Patent Survey, summarizing the responses of 1,332 U.S.-based technology startups in the biotechnology, medical device, IT hardware, software, and Internet sectors.”

The Net

• FCC, FCC Releases Chairman Video Address, New Media Resources on Third Way Legal Approach (May 7): Press release with links to FCC Chairman Genachowski’s video address (plus a transcript) and blog post; FCC General Counsel Austin Schlick’s blog post; FAQs; and a Glossary of terms. Much commentary is spewing forth, but it is always worthwhile to read the horse’s mouth. For completeness, see also Genachowski’s statement of last Thursday, and Schlick’s legal memo. All FCC material is on Broadband.gov.
• And some commentary on the FCC’s Third Way from Precursor, FCC Understating Systemic Risks of “Third Way” — Why It’s a Disaster Waiting to Happen (May 7); PFF, The Comcast Decision, the FCC’s Third Way and the Next Communications Act (May 7).
• Center for Media Research, 234 Million Americans Making Negligible Changes in Mobile Phone Industry (May 10): Lots of numbers on market shares. Most amazing number: “In the 3 month average ending in March, 234 million Americans age 13 and older were mobile subscribers,” Quite a trick, since according to the Statistical Abstract, there are only 250 million Americans age 13 & up. There must be quite a few multiple subscribers, I think.
• Network World, U.S. Mobile Culture Still in Stone Ages, Survey Says (May 4): Good Heavens! It’s a texting gap! Mobilize the tweeners immediately.
• Broadband Breakfast, UTOPIA: Perfection or Fantasy? Partnering Public-Private Sectors with Broadband (May 9): “a combined network owned by connected cities, and therefore citizens of each community. . . .  allows any network provider to use the infrastructure to offer related consumers services in an effort to create more competition within the broadband universe, and to provide rural residents state of the art fiber connections to their homes.”
• EconTalk, Benkler on Net Neutrality, Competition, and the Future of the Internet (April 10): “Benkler argues in favor of net neutrality and government support of broadband access. He is skeptical of the virtues of new technology (such as the iPad) fearing that they will lead to less innovation.”

Digital Commerce

• AEI, Digital Money: Trends and Policy Challenges (April 23): Video of event. Participants: Joshua R. Floum, GC of  Visa Inc., discusses the future of electronic payments; Geoffrey R. Gerdes, senior economist in the FRB analyzes current payment trends; legal and policy issues re new electronic payment methods are discussed by Wayne A. Abernathy, XVP at the ABA and lawer Robert G. Ballen.
• Federalist Society, National Interest Rate Ceiling on Credit Cards (April 29): “On May 22, 2009, President Obama signed the Credit Card Act of 2009.  This legislation imposed notice requirements and moratorium periods on the ability of credit card companies to increase rates and fees.” As usual with any price control legislation throughout recorded history, the market distortions  have started, and Congress is already thinking about how to deal with leaks in the dike.

Innovation

• CNN Tech, In the tech world, porn quietly leads the way (April 23): “On the internet, streaming video, credit-card verification sites, Web referral rings and video technology like Flash all can be traced back to innovations designed to share, and sell, adult content.”
• And, says Shrinkwrapped, in The Future of Sex I (May 5):  “The Future of Sex is rapidly approaching.  The relationship of Sex and technology will come to fruition with the advent of fully immersive virtual reality.  The use of haptic suits and 3-D goggles, or some approximation, will allow the voyeur to enter into his own sexual fantasies in ways never before possible.  This has the potential to shake our concept of the self and our understanding of intimacy; it is a truly disruptive technology, and this technology will arrive much sooner than most people realize.”
• Asylum, ‘The Internet Will Fail’ — Bold Predictions That Completely Bombed (April 21): The e-mag departs from its focus on sex to emphasize the importance of humility. The relevance to Digital Society – if any of these assessments had been made by a government official with the power to kill the innovation, it would have been killed. The beauty of the market is that it provides many paths for innovators. Perhaps the most spectacular of the errors (even more than the Internet dismissal): “The Beatles have no future in show business.”
• Don Dodge on the Next Big Thing, The natural evolution of a startup and why it is bad (April 23): “Successful startups are founded by product people . . . .  Once the product is done the Sales and Marketing guys take over the company to push market adoption and revenue. Then the Finance guys take over to get operational efficiency and profit. Then the company declines and eventually dies.”
• Microsoft on the Issues, The Nexus between Privacy and Responsible Innovation (May 7).

Health Care, Medical, Genetics, Agriculture

• The American, Something Old, Something New: Biotech’s Enormous Potential (April 30), by John Calfee:  “Medical breakthroughs from using existing drugs in new ways await discovery—if manufacturers have an incentive to pursue them.” (See also above, under Patents.)
• Federalist Society, Health Care Reform: Implications for the Intellectual Property Community (May 5):  “Free market advocates and property rights proponents argue that . . . freedom to innovate will be reduced, and the revenue stream essential to fund research and development will be decreased.  Supporters see . . .  an imposition of certain otherwise absent efficiencies, and the rise of a new, large buyer in the marketplace that will in fact increase the revenue stream of industry players.”
• From GaveKal Research, on biotech (May 4): “Like many farmers these days, the [speaker] had advanced training in agricultural sciences. . . . As a boy in Nebraska, he remembered that the process of growing soybeans was quite energy-intensive: his family had to plow repeatedly, and that used up a lot of fuel. His cousins who run the farm now are able to drastically cut energy consumption, and this is because of Monsanto’s Roundup pesticides, mixed with Roundup-resistant soybean seeds. — Many members of the audience were worried about how this genetically-modified seed worked. . . . it sounded a little scary . . . the kind of multiple interference in nature’s process that, for some, smacks of ‘Frankenscience’. — But there is also a brilliance behind the technological advances in agriculture, which has made life much easier for the farmers, and raises yields to help feed fast-growing world populace.  . . . Roundup resistant seeds work like this: They inject a protein into the DNA of the soybean that does not bind with the proteins of the Roundup pesticide. It is as simple and elegant as that.”

Cybersecurity

• Connected Planet, How can we secure the smart grid? (May 4): “Security threats on the smart grid could include: those who would seek to take control of the grid; disrupt the grid’s operations; defraud the electric power companies through either electricity theft or embezzlement of funds; or steal customer data, identities or funds. Monitoring of a home’s power signature would be an indication of absence, which when taken together with other simple surveillance would leave the residence easily targeted.”

Competition

• ars technica, Apple iPhone OS compiler policy may lead to antitrust probe (May 3): “The US Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission may be considering an investigation into Apple’s decision to block iPhone OS apps created by many third-party compilers.”

Events

• Broadband Breakfast Club, The Google Book Search Case and E-Book Licensing (May 11, DC). Inaugural of a new series on intellectual property events.
• George Washington Law School, Second Annual Law Symposium on Intellectual Property (May 11; DC).
• OMMA Mobile, The Road to Appi-Ness (May 12; NYC). “At 7 billion downloads last year alone and counting, the mobile app market is just getting started as Google, Apple, RIM and now Microsoft engage in an escalating platform war.”
• PFF, Can Government Help Save the Press? (May 20; DC).
• TechCrunch Disrupt (May 24-26; NYC).  “Three-day, single-track conference and startup competition to immerse you in the debate about what’s changing in media and technology right now, what’s causing it and what we need to do about it to survive and thrive in real time.” (Via Don Dodge, nee Microsoft, now Google.)
• GIPC Speaker Series: The Global Trade of Counterfeit Medicines and the Developing World (May 27; DC).
• CSIS, Cyber Security Discussion with LTG Keith Alexander, Director of the National Security Agency (June 3; DC).
• USTelecom & Connected Planet, Building a Better Internet (June 22; DC):  “In-depth looks at consumer expectations for the Internet, domestic and International efforts to expand broadband, and ways of creating a more efficient Internet for delivering a broad range of current and new services to consumers and businesses.”
• The ninth Supernova Forum 2010: Perestroika (July 30; Philadelphia).  Three key themes: Evolving Digital Infrastructure: Everything is a Platform? / Networked Business Innovation: Models and Vision / Crossing the Abyss: Transforming (or Replacing) Established Institutions.